Mind in the Gutter
by Yvi
Summary: After the revolution, Thenardier has a ramble.


­Paris fair, that's what the poets call her. They portray her as if she's some antique deity to be set alongside all their other outdated gods and goddesses. Lord knows why artists are so besotted with them to begin with; there's not a member of that treasured pantheon that was ever good for anything save provoking infidelities and wars. Though in those respects, there's really no place Paris would be more at home. Well now, they've got that much right, whether they realize it or not. Probably not, considering.

What the oblivious fools don't realize is that they'd do well to stop treating her as if she's a countess peering shyly out of a tower or some such thing. Never treat a lady any better than she should be, it's said. Any true bourgeois can tell you that lifting a gutter girl into the aristocracy is unheard of. Just one of many things that make men jab their noses towards the sky in search of cleaner air and ladies twitter excitedly behind their ostrich-feather fans. Never mind that the concept is more prevalent than anyone can tell. 

Better that they tug their heads out of the sky and back into the sewers with the rest of us. It's time they came to their senses and realized Paris doesn't peer at her domain through virgin lashes. Always in the midst of things, this lady is. She knows everything: the malady the duke's new mistress made him a present of, the gendarme who knocked an innkeeper senseless in a midnight brawl, the lampshade-maker's apprentice who's been slipping extra coins into his pockets. She sees, well aware of all she's responsible for, and she drinks it all in with a barking laugh and the leftover wine that runs through the roads. No matter that that same wine nourishes her people—Paris takes from the people the way the people take from themselves. It's everyone for himself, here, even the city. Remorseless and solitary, and so on into eternity. Hardly the life of a decent woman.

So much for the artistic Paris, then. No dainty duchess, she, oh no. She's as greedy and gritty as a fishwife, her skin caked with dirt and riddled with stones, her teeth broken and gutted buildings, and bared in a mocking smile, forever hungry—Paris, like most poor women, is always hungry, and far from choosy. She'll take whatever's put on her plate, for the most part, with no disdainful sorting apart of the choicest morsels. Poets take heed, for Paris sucks all sorts into her maw, gulping as ravenously as the ragged half-starved swarm that makes up most of her population. The rich, the royal, the destitute, the depraved—very little is ever above or below her.

But every now and then the city has to purge itself of its most deluded inmates. You can be poor or impious or corrupt and still live. You can steal and cheat and Paris will keep you. You can lie and murder and still she'll recognize you as one of her own. But try to turn her foundations upside down and you're done for. This is the one thing Paris fair won't stand for, and she'll soon be rid of you. The city of lies can never be transformed into a paragon of truth and justice. Even of she could, she'd fight it every step of the way. 

And damned if her sporadic cleansings don't make for banquets as good as anything the king himself might serve up. Fine as a royal feast, always. 

Blood, they say, is the nectar of life. Anyone who's ever seen men sprawled in pools of it, necklaces gleaming round their throats, cufflinks shining at their wrists, knows this is far from true—or at least, only half true. Blood may be life's nectar, but gold is its ambrosia. 

There was more, far more, than cufflinks and necklaces. Some of them had their hair tied back with satin ribbons as fine as any milliner's. In one case, the boy's actual hair looked fit to grace an heiress's head. Luckily, it was only bloodstained in a few places; he'd had the wit to fall so as to keep much of it from becoming very badly soaked. Blood and gold don't mix well, you see. I cut off the clean bits to sell to a wigmaker. 

There were rosaries on some of them. Fine lot of good they did their owners… All the same, some of them seemed to be of good quality. There was a particular one that appeared to be worth quite a bit more than the others. I had a terrible time prying it out of the boy's hands. And there were rings, buckles, even the odd unscathed cravat. Better than a pawnbroker's, all of it. 

One of them had a notebook in his pocket. It was hellish work digging it out; I'd done a fair amount of damage to my hands by the time I was done. And, as it turned out, it was all in vain. Most of the writing was still legible even though the pages were sticking together, but no good came of it. I'd been hoping to encounter a home address I could make use of. Write to it, maybe, tell the family of its son's fate, and with any luck receive a token of gratitude in return. But no, there was nothing in the book save a page of two of idiotic verse. Typical foolishness, saccharine babbling on the idylls of youth: "Do you remember our sweet life when we were so young, we two…" And so on, until the pages grew too saturated for anything to be deciphered further. Just as well.

Sweet life be damned. From the cradle onward, life is never sweet, nor are those saddled with it ever young. Youth is a reminder of the suffering stretched ahead, year upon year of living in squalor and dreaming of riches. There's no joy in that. Love, with the giddiness it brings, may provide a distraction for a time, but there's never any profit in it. Strange that the same sentimental fools are the ones are the ones who throw themselves straight into the monster's jaws. It'd have made me laugh, if I could do it anymore without grating through my throat.

It's horribly funny, though, all the same. The ideas they get in their heads—newcomers chirp this one incessantly, about how Paris is where a person can be anything. Ah, but Paris is a stubborn lass. Tear up the city all you like, children, but don't dare try to tear your way to a better place in it. Paris fair, city of dreams. They're never told that the dreams are devoured, not fulfilled. And they never realize the futility of it all until it's too late. 

But they're good for something, make no mistake. Paris is a magnet for this sort, and there's no denying their folly leaves a good heap of advantages in its wake. 

Well, now. There's a fine-looking watch on that one over there. 

Thank God they never learn from their mistakes.


End file.
